Shak Taylor - The Crypt

[Admin]

You awaken to the pain in your hands and find yourself kneeling on a floor of rough stone.

You are blinded by the mask fixed to your face, but find that it slips off easily as you lift your head. The image of a skull without eyes, ears or a mouth stares back at you. Your hands are less easily freed, as they have been stitched together. Thin, metal wire has been looped through the uppermost layer of skin on your hands, trapping them palm-to-palm.

You are in a room made entirely from stone. Flames flicker in barred windows, casting dancing, wavering shapes across the walls and floor. The air stinks of heat and smoke. Chains hang in loops from the ceiling and, somewhere, gears are grinding.

The only exit is sealed by a heavy metal door, where you see a bass relief of the same mask you woke up wearing.

On the floor before you is a simple, white card printed with a single sentence: “You cannot save them.”

[Queen of Cunts]

The world tasted like badger. She wondered how long she’d been asleep. Whoever had got her had given her a fair whack on the head, and her jaw was feeling pretty swollen to boot. It was all pretty delicious. She could feel a bump rising on the back of her skull, feel the tightness in her skin, and it made her want to give it a stroke. Not that she could, with her hands all weird.

She was lighter. All of her weapons were gone, the obvious and the ninja. It was like being naked, only with clothes, which was admittedly the best sort of naked to be. She still didn’t like it much. She’d have a fag and be fine. Only she was pretty sure someone had taken those too, so there would be fucking hell to pay. They had awoken a sleeping dragon. A very angry and nicotine withdrawn dragon.

She opened her eyes a crack, trying to keep from being noticed. It was all dark, but she couldn’t tell if that was just the ambient light in the room. Her eyelids peeled back and, sure enough, she was blind. Which was shit, but at least she would develop psychic powers. That would be awesome. She could torment the weenie with her own voodoo.

There was too much noise to hear if there was anyone else in the room with her. Something was making a fucking racket. Fortunately, when she lifted her head, the blindness ceased its pish, and there was no one else there. For a moment, it looked like she was in someone’s basement of love. Then she had a rethink and realised that she must have been in hell. Which explained where her cigarettes had gone, because an eternity without smoking was definitely the absolute worst thing she could imagine.

She wasn’t feeling dizzy, which meant she probably hadn’t been drugged. Tranquilizers and head wounds would have been overkill anyway. Getting to her feet was easy, even without the use of her hands. It felt a bit like showing off, even though there wasn’t anyone to see. But she corrected herself: it was just being amazing, regardless of company.

Another correction: someone was definitely watching, even if they weren’t in the room.

She wondered if this was John’s revenge for that time she’d taped centrefolds all over his bedroom ceiling. Maybe he’d finally snapped or something. Priests were always a little bit weird. Really, they just needed to have a wank. It would help.

Her hands were sore for a reason, so at least she didn’t have the phantom pains. Someone had done a little home surgery on her. Maybe it was Burke. Maybe this was some kind of new game they were going to be playing. If so, his balls weren’t going to like her retort.

She flexed her fingers, trying to work up some slack. It took her a second to realise that this wasn’t amateur hour at the free clinic. This was high-grade wire, the kind they used to stitch wounds that didn’t show, and the needlework was perfect. Someone had hired a surgeon to do this. And that was everyone she knew right out the window as potential suspects.

She started to chuckle. If this was someone’s idea of a deterrent then they were due to be sorely disappointed. She spread her feet and set her shoulders, clenching her teeth as she prepared herself. Then, without even a moment to have second thoughts, she pulled her hands apart, laughing as she did. Stitches popped. Skin tore. Blood started to bead from the holes and run in thick rivulets down her fingers, warm and teasing. If this was a game, she didn’t think she’d mind playing after all.

She licked a few runaway droplets off her forearm, smearing blood across her lips. Then, she ripped off her left sleeve. Her fingers would have to crust over, but she could bind her palms and that would stop the worst of it. And she could still finger paint, which was awesome.

It was warm in here. Kind of a shame she couldn’t take the fire with her.

She picked up the mask she’d been wearing. It was kind of pretty, a skull with no eyes, mouth or nose. She’d have liked to take it with her. The puzzle wasn’t exactly cerebral. In fact, she spent more time trying to figure out how to take the mask with her. Unfortunately, she was going to have to make the trade - the mask for her freedom. Not a tough call, considering that the mask wasn’t hers.

She fixed it to the door and watched, less than impressed, as it ground open with all the cheer and fanfare of a coffin falling open.

“Okay, my turn,” she announced, for the benefit of her unseen voyeur, “ready or not, here I come.”

[Queen of Cunts]

She took the stairs two at a time, practically leaping to the top. The tingle of the weeping wounds in her hands made her excited to see what else this weirdo might have cooked up. When she was a small thing, it was the kind of place that would have given her nightmares, but what was the worst they could come up with now? Zombies? Some kind of BOW? Even a Tyrant could be made dead if you stayed in the fight long enough.

Of course, she’d need some explosives for that, but she could figure that out later.

There was cold air blowing down the stairwell towards her, and she could see a sliver of night sky above. That meant outside. She was going to be terribly disappointed if her captor had given up after stitched hands and a less than stellar brain teaser.

She emerged, and right away she could tell there was more to it than that. She’d just emerged from a crypt at the middle of what looked like a graveyard. It was sinister, right down to the full moon and rolling mist. Gnarled trees reached out with limbs that spread their branches like claws, long fingers that spirited you away if you were a bad little girl. Only Shak was neither bad nor little, so they could fucking bring it.

She was tempted to go looking for the dry ice machine, and really burst her host’s bubble, but maybe a little whimsy wasn’t so bad.

The gravestones were placed haphazardly, a couple here, a few more there, all around the open space, enclosed on three sides by the walls of a large building. She could see a stone stairway leading up to the patio at the back of what looked like a huge mansion. The only way out of where she was currently standing seemed to be that house.

The mist pulled back like a veil. The crown of a shaved scalp emerged, leaning back against one of the tombstones. Shak would have thought it was a survivor, if its hair hadn’t been speckled with mould. When she looked, she realised that each of the tombstones had a shape reclining against it, all of them hunched and bedraggled. They were all dead.

Actually, they were all undead. A hand that was little more than flaking skin and brittle bone gripped the top of the one of the stones, pulling the slumped body to its feet. A moan escaped its hole of a mouth and it staggered towards her. A second later, the rest of the party started getting to their feet, like they were welcoming her back to the land of the living.

She reached out a hand, like she was expecting a shake from the lead corpse. It gripped her finger, its papery skin sloughing off as it tried to pull her closer. She grinned and whipped it around, thrusting its head towards the bars on the railings near her exit. Its skull cracked as it was forced through a gap a few inches too small. The pressure made one of its eyes burst and a split formed on the back of its cranium, leaking dark blood.

The second held its arms wide, like a dance partner waiting to lead. She gave a solemn curtsey, like she was more than happy to take it up on its offer. Then, when it reached out to grab her, she took it by the wrist and spun around it, locking its arm behind its back. It struggled, twisting its head as it tried to bite her.

“You didn’t bow,” she informed it, putting her hand on the back of its head and forcing it down. Its mouth opened, and then its upper jaw met the top of one of the tombstones, nearly snapping its head clean in half. She stamped on the back of its skull, and it flopped to the floor. Its top bounced off into the undergrowth.

She picked up a useful looking branch and turned to find another contender bearing down on her. She jammed the stick up through the underside of its jaw, watching with glee as its already dimmed lights went out completely. It was just too bad the head didn’t come off. She could have given it to Burke or John. A corpse-cicle.

She got the impression that she was supposed to recognise these people, but... They were just Umbrella zombies. They were trying to play tricks on her. She wasn’t buying what they were selling. And she couldn’t remember anywhere she might have known them from anyway. They could eat a dick. Specifically hers.

Since she and Burke had taken on that Marauder, everything still felt like it was moving in slow motion. She wondered if she’d picked up some kind of magical, time-related power. She didn’t think so. She hadn’t eaten any of it. She knew you were supposed to eat Mermaids, but she’d never been able to find one, and she didn’t know if the same logic applied to Tyrants.

One lunged at her, slow and sloppy, and she kicked its jaw so hard its teeth shattered. A severed length of tongue flopped to the floor. She gave it another kick in the pelvis, popping its left leg out of joint and taking it off balance. Then, she grabbed it by its lapels and hurled it to the ground. Her boot mashed its face and made sure it wouldn’t get up again.

[Queen of Cunts]

She’d turned the graveyard a delightful shade of red. Blood was dripping off every tombstone and ran thick through the grassy peat that made up the ground here. The zombies had been a lot of fun, but they’d given up after only a few minutes. They weren’t nearly as robust as Umbrella’s other monsters. They were an appetiser.

She grabbed the most intact body she could find and locked her arms around his waist, pulling him upright. He was rail thin, and even dead weight he was fairly easy to lift. That made what she was going to do next that much easier.

She jerked the corpse up like she was going to suplex it, then threw it forwards. Its head rocked forward right onto the railing spike she was aiming for. It punched clean through the shrivelled skin beneath its jaw and burst from the top of its head in a spurt of black blood. It hit her on the face like cold, thick rain, and she grinned. She threw its arms up one at a time, tangling them in the spikes above, so that it looked almost like the body was crucified.

That way, the others would know that she’d been here.

She contemplated setting up another body with its head buried in the first’s crotch and then wondered what there was to contemplate. She drew the line at pulling down the first’s trousers, since she wasn’t really interested in its dry, crumbly arse bone, but her artistry was clear. There was no way anyone could mistake that for anyone else’s handiwork.

She found a zombie that had been crudely disembowelled lying in a thick patch of weeds and helped herself to a handful of its necrotic guts. One of the great things about Burke was that he was immune to the virus, so if she pelted him with intestines then nothing bad would come of it. Hell, she could rope him with those intestines and ride him bareback, and there wouldn’t be any physical damage. Emotional damage, on the other hand...

She stopped to survey the carnage a moment longer, taking a little pride in her work. They were all over the place, in little bits. Limbs and heads and shattered torsos lay and hung all over the graveyard like ornaments, their insides festooning every tree like streamers. It felt like a party. She scuffed her toe in the dirt and fingers rolled off into the grass. She was kind of glad she didn’t have to clean up after herself. It was all part of her job, and she loved her job. It was important to get satisfaction from one’s employment.

She looked around the yard for her next stop. There was a big, heavy gate off to one side that looked like it might have had a doorway behind it, but she couldn’t persuade the gate itself to move. She gave it a rattle, but decided she’d check the door up where the light was before she climbed it. It was at the top of the stairs that led up to the back of the mansion.

That was locked too, but she wasn’t going to just give up at that. She kicked it, rammed it with her shoulder, threw her weight into it every which way, testing the lock, the hinges, the corners, looking for any sign of weakness. Then, she started swearing.

Because there might have been a password. You never knew.